Over the past 10 days, the calls have intensified for Lou Anna K. Simon, president of Michigan State University, to step down. The main impetus: increased outrage over Dr. Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State physician and USA Gymnastics team doctor who is accused of abusing dozens of women and girls, and questions of whether university officials knew about his misconduct.
But that’s not the only reason Ms. Simon, who has led Michigan State since 2005, is taking heat. The university’s handling of sexual assault has been heavily scrutinized for years.
Dr. Nassar, who was an associate professor in Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, pleaded guilty last month to multiple counts of criminal sexual conduct and earlier this year to child-pornography charges. He will spend decades in prison. Michigan State is being sued by several of Dr. Nassar’s victims on the grounds that university officials didn’t do enough to protect them from his abuse. He worked at the institution until 2016.
Last week, the Lansing State Journal published a scathing editorial asserting that “Lou Anna Simon is no longer the right person to lead Michigan State University,” citing “MSU’s inability to keep women safe from sexual assault and harassment on campus.”
Tom Leonard, speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, said on Sunday that he, too, thought Ms. Simon should resign. He also called for an independent investigation into Michigan State. If such an investigation isn’t underway in the coming weeks, he said, state lawmakers should consider withholding funds from the university as a means of forcing officials to answer questions about Dr. Nassar.
“At best, you have clearly proven yourself grossly incompetent,” Mr. Leonard, a Republican, wrote in a Facebook post about Ms. Simon and Michigan State. “At worst, you are covering something up and shielding bad actors from the justice these victims deserve. It is well past time for all of us to find out the truth.”
Long before Dr. Nassar’s case made headlines, Michigan State faced a yearslong federal investigation into how officials responded to sexual-assault reports. In 2015, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the university’s sexual-misconduct policies had created a “hostile environment,” violating Title IX, the gender-equity law.
In a resolution agreement with the civil-rights office, the university agreed to ramp up its prevention and response efforts by providing students and staff with more training and revising its policies to ensure that investigations would be completed more quickly.
Though Michigan State officials said they had already made progress toward those goals at the time the agreement was announced, in September 2015, some students weren’t satisfied. Four female students filed suit two months later, alleging that the university was slow to complete investigations and that, as a result, at least one male student who had committed sexual assault remained on campus and continued to harass his original victim and other women.
Earlier this year, three Michigan State football players were charged with sexual assault. The university commissioned an outside investigation into how its athletic department had handled the allegations. It found that Mark Dantonio, the head football coach, had complied with university policies, though a football staff member who didn’t notify the Title IX office or the police once he learned of the allegations was fired. The football players were dismissed from the team after the charges were filed.
The university was hit with two more lawsuits this fall. One lawsuit came from a male student who was found responsible for violating the university’s sexual-assault policy and suspended. He alleges that Michigan State didn’t uphold his due-process rights during the investigation. The other came from a woman who said that she was sexually assaulted by a football player in 2015 and that the university failed to provide her with counseling and other support services.
The university is in the midst of an outside review of its Title IX policies, commissioned by Ms. Simon. Lawyers from Husch Blackwell completed their first report last month, which found that Michigan State’s policies and procedures were not only compliant with Title IX, they were also “among the most comprehensive and robust we have seen.”
The reviewers are now assessing institutional training and education efforts on sexual-assault prevention and response and will finish a second report in the spring of 2018.
Michigan State’s board has thrown its support behind Ms. Simon despite the recent criticism. In a response to the Lansing State Journal’s editorial, its members wrote that she “has proven her commitment to helping the university when it comes to the societal issue of sexual misconduct.”
Part of the problem, they wrote, is that privacy laws and litigation prevent university officials from discussing details of the sexual-assault cases that have drawn scrutiny.
“This situation is exacerbated by those who selectively ignore other facts about MSU’s continuous improvement and the many details available about our progress,” they wrote.
The university did not immediately respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment. Reporters who have sought comment from Michigan State previously have been referred to the response issued by the board.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
